Mumbai’s is one of the world’s busiest airports — it handled more than 130,000 passengers on a single day recently. It had come out with flying colours in a drill that simulated a bomb threat in September. But it was defenceless against the disruption caused when a random construction worker in another part of the city dug up the ground, and cut through the optical fibre cable that connects the computers at the airports to the cloud.
Some questions that arise are: since the right of way for laying underground cables is a highly valued commodity, how come the ground above the cables is not protected from random digging? How come there are no other cables that serve as redundancy? Shouldn’t there be redundancy in the form of microwave links and via satellite? How can the cloud connectivity of vital installations in India be left hostage to those who wield a backhoe with the same sense of responsibility with which a bull might inspect wares in a China shop?
The cyberattack on AIIMS serves as a warning. It is a top institution in the public sector. After the month that was designated as National Cyber Security Awareness Month, we must be concerned about the security of the entire government if all the precautions urged by CERT-In (India’s Computer Emergency Response Team) could not shield AIIMS from a ransomware attack.
It is crucial to realise that the next battle might take place online rather than at a border. Big nations increasingly view space and cyber capabilities as strategic assets for both offence and defence. Strategic Support Force is the uninspired name of a division of the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA. That is where China keeps its equipment and personnel for cyberoffense and defence, among other things.
Every node of the functioning framework of the modern nation is a potential enemy target, from the non-deliverable rupee futures on international markets to the enormous amounts of corporate wealth stored in dematerialized accounts, from the core banking solutions of commercial banks to the command structure of the armed forces, from the SCADA-controlled sluice gates of dams to the load dispatch centres of the power grid.
India must protect itself from cyberattacks with the best, most effective tools and technology available. It is equally crucial for the nation to equip itself with the ability to deal devastating cyberattacks of its own. The theory of mutually assured destruction is still true for all weapons, not just nuclear ones.
But warding off a cyber threat is more than a question of technology. Cyber security lies in creating a culture of modern, aware, responsible interdependence. City planning is as much warding off chaos on the roads as laying ducts for cooking gas, optical fibre cable, and power in pre-planned, well-articulated, well-demarcated pipeline networks immune to unplanned digging.
Complex patterns and unique characters are just as important to password security as human decency and a desire to keep others secure.
